I would like to use tables in answers and questions. Without such support, I find myself using ASCII art tables with the code-text tool, but that takes too long, and isn't really maintainable.

This could be used to illustrate memory cells, and of course to create "real tables" with information contained.

Edit:

It looks like HTML tables using <table> are not going to be supported. I would like to ask for a feature in the editor that allows and supports creating tables using ASCII art (so the nasty manual managing with spaces will go away), at the very least (no CSS guy - but could imagine there are other styling techniques too).

Edit (workaround):

As it turns out, google chart supports the creation of graphviz diagrams, which is also able to render some limited HTML for creating tables. So the following URL:

I would love basic <table> tags! It is something that is available in most places, and to just exclude it without reason does not make sense. Rather discuss within the community and see how we can come up with workable solution.
–
AquaAlexJul 22 '14 at 12:37

3 Answers
3

Using Markdown as a proxy for table-markup eliminates the worries that somebody may forget to close a TD. The markdown simply won't translate into HTML if it's not 100% correct. As an example, ** won't cause all of the text on the page from here on to be bold.

If I had to guess, I'd say a reason they don't want to allow tables is that they're very easy to mess up, which results in Very Bad Things, especially since the site layout is in tables. That's just a guess, though.
–
Hilarious Comedy PestoJul 14 '09 at 16:04

5

Using markdown as a proxy for tables eliminates that problem. You can't not-complete a TD with Markdown.
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Jonathan SampsonJul 14 '09 at 16:07

I think he was specifically referring to table markup in HTML. At least I hope so because the only other way to interpret that is "You don't get nice tabular formatting, because F you."
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JohnFxSep 29 '11 at 20:11